Category: Rental Property

Downsides of being a landlord

One of the questions I get asked most often about being a landlord is What’s the downsides of being a landlord? While there are numerous upsides; 4 ways to make lots of money for starters. There are a few downsides as well. I’m actually only going to talk about one downside in this article as it recently had a perfect ending to it. This downside is terrible tenants.

I know there’s lots of ways to screen tenants and you could weed out the majority of potential crazies but occasionally you might take a chance on a young person with no references and get burnt.

How bad was this person?

Good question! First let me give a little bit of background on how my duplex is run. One of the major selling points for this building for me was the fact that it’s in my hometown, and my father owns the identical adjacent property. They were built together when the original owners built them. He’s owned his unit for almost a decade and has had no issues. He also helps to manage the duplex for me, I’ll post all of the ads and answer all of the emails but the in-person viewings are done by him and the screening of tenants.

So you want to make money with income properties? Here’s 4 ways to do it.

So you want to start investing in income properties now? Great choice! Just like investing in the markets, income properties are all about one thing; time in the market. The best time for you to buy is now and the best time for you to sell is a long time away.

Real estate is similar to many investments in the fact that you cannot time the market. Analysts and the general public often get this wrong. Usually when someone does get it right, it was by pure luck and they’ll never be able to duplicate that performance again. In Canada, for example people have been talking about the bubble bursting in Vancouver and Toronto for as long as I can remember but from January 2015 to January 2016 they’ve still increased by 30.9% and 14.2% respectively.

It’s been any day now for those bubbles to burst for over a decade and they’re still booming. This brings me to the first way to make money with income properties.Read more

Towards the end of March in 2014 I received some great news at work in the form of a promotion. Fantastic! It came with a nice pay bump, new responsibilities and it also came with a transfer to a different site for a new project. This was a camp only fly-in and fly-out site. Not so fantastic! As you know I had just taken possession of my house just five short months earlier. Now I need to rent it completely, not just the one room.

This transfer took effect immediately. I would be in a camp an hour north of town and would be flying out of an airstrip on one of the work sites. I wouldn’t even have the chance to drop by on my way to the airport to show the house to prospective renters, nor would I be available to deal with any issues that may arise from the renters. My only option was to find a Rental Management company ASAP! Read more